


Breakthrough Insomnia

by periphery87



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, M/M, medical talk lite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 20:56:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10171859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periphery87/pseuds/periphery87
Summary: A night at the Academy. Bones can't sleep.





	

When you are in medicine, there are things to which you become inured. Leonard has known this since he was seven years old, since his cousin Ellie fell out of a tree at a family reunion and snapped her leg badly. The aunts gasped and the uncles turned green, but his daddy the internist and his mama the ER doc didn’t flinch. 

So he doesn’t flinch. He does his time on shift and on service during his Academy years and learns that Starfleet personnel are more accident-prone and more predisposed to offworld diseases than his patients back in Georgia. A lot’s the same though. The staff in the OR still bicker amiably about what music to play when the patient’s gone under. They live in the alternate reality in which not-sick covers everything from bleeding to puking to febrile, while sick is reserved for the most concerning cases. They gossip over nasty open wound in ED bays. They roll their eyes and sigh when babies pull out their own tubes.

You are so inured that you forget that there is anything to be inured to.

But still. There are days.

He has had a string of those days and he is exhausted beyond all reason and yet still, somehow, he cannot sleep. He has to be awake again in five hours and the frustration is enough to make him want to cry. So he takes the advice he would give to a patient – for once – and he gets up and wanders into the living room to get some work done.

Jim shuffles out of his room after only ten minutes or so. “I thought grandpas were asleep at this hour.”

“Sorry,” Leonard mutters. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” Jim says, unconvincingly. He falls onto the opposite end of the couch and swings his feet up into Leonard’s lap, nearly knocking the PADD out of his hands.

“You – fuck – cretin,” Leonard says half-heartedly. “Your feet stink.”

“Uh-huh.” Jim wiggles his toes and yawns. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

“Whatever’s happening at the hospital.”

Leonard tucks the PADD against his chest and looks at Jim. For someone who gets injured as often as he does, Jim is vibrantly, undeniably healthy. Even now, slumped against the couch cushions, eyes drooping, he radiates energy and youth. He is the pinnacle of not-sick.

Right now it feels like Leonard’s entire service is Sick and he can’t catch his breath.

“Nah, I’m okay,” he says.

“You don’t look okay,” Jim says bluntly. “But you don’t have to talk about it if it won’t help. Is it too late for a drink?”

“Unfortunately.”

“I’ll get you one tomorrow then.” Jim lays his head down on the back couch cushion, eyes drifting shut.

“You should go back to bed.”

“I’m okay.” Jim smirks without bothering to open his eyes.

Leonard shakes his head and props his PADD against Jim’s ankles. Within moments slow, even breathing wafts from the other end of the couch. He makes it through just one more of his residents’ notes before his own eyes start to leaden.

The fuck, he thinks, before he leans his head back and is instantly asleep.


End file.
